The Bernard Madoff and the Allen Stanford scams have shown that seemingly reputable financial institutions can have darker sides. Fraud costs trillions of pounds each year to the world's economies. The Financial Services Authority in the UK puts prime importance on the tackling of the issue and along with other financial institutions has set up a number of initiatives to attempt to tackle the problem.

Fraud affects every sector of society and is continually evolving as fraudsters look to come up with new ways to steal from individuals, companies and the government while evading the authorities. Banking fraud in particular is huge and growing despite many initiatives to attempt to tackle it.

The introduction of chip and pin has helped to reduce card fraud in retail stores and where other physical transactions take place. As a result fraudsters are moving over to the internet as it provides a greater number of opportunities with less risk.

Phishing scams are the most common form of online fraud. Millions of emails are sent daily from fraudsters pretending to be from banks and financial institutions. Once the user clicks on the link they will be taken to a mock up of the banks internet login page. If the user is fooled and attempts to login the fraudsters will capture the online banking details. There are many variations of this scam and other internet schemes designed to fool users into providing fraudsters with their banking details.

For those concerned about how fraud can affect their organisation then they can attend one of the many fraud related conferences that are held across the world. Different conferences will obviously be discussing different subject matters so choose one which covers the specific area of interest.

A well planned conference will have leading industry experts discussing current fraud practices affecting the financial services industry and businesses as well as the how to deal with these concerns.

Conferences that offer high calibre speakers will attract senior members of other businesses giving fantastic opportunities to network with the key decision makers of these businesses and discuss the latest developments in banking fraud prevention. Marcus Evans scam and fraud related conferences are regularly held and attract high calibre companies to their events.

Tom Swayer writes articles covering a broad range of subjects. His main area of expertise is fraud awareness and scam prevention. Tom has written articles on these subjects including a recent article covering the Marcus Evans scam conferences.